Virginia will hold special elections in three districts Tuesday to fill vacancies in the General Assembly set in motion by November’s elections, with control of both houses of the legislature on the line.
Two of the special elections are in solidly Democratic districts in Northern Virginia, another in a Republican district that stretches from Appomattox County to western Hanover County.
If all three districts hold to their previous leanings, the lineup in the General Assembly would remain the same: 51-49 Democratic in the House of Delegates, 21-19 Democratic in the state Senate. However, any Republican upsets in Northern Virginia would result in a tie in that chamber, while a Democratic victory in the Southside district would give Democrats an extra seat in the Senate.
With the prospect of flipping one or two Democratic seats in sight, Gov. Glenn Youngkin spent part of the weekend in Loudoun County campaigning for the Republicans; that interest, in turn, drew rival rallies by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is the only declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor.
Early voting in all three has been underway since mid-December; polls are open Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Cardinal will post election results Tuesday night as they become available.
Here are the districts and who’s running:
Senate District 10
Reason for vacancy: Former state Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County, was elected to the 5th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The candidates: Republican Luther Cifers owns a kayak business in Prince Edward County; Democrat Jack Trammell teaches sociology at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland and lives in Louisa County.
We sent questionnaires to all the candidates running in the special elections; you can see where Cifers and Trammell stand in our Voter Guide.
Senate District 32
Reason for vacancy: Former state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun County, was elected to the 10th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The candidates: Former Del. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun County, is the Democratic candidate. He is a business analyst and was the first child of Indian immigrants elected to the General Assembly. The Republican candidate is Tumay Harding, a former teacher whom The Washington Post has described as “a vocal critic” of the Loudoun County school system.
Neither candidate responded to our questionnaire.
House District 26
Reason for vacancy: Srinivasan resigned as delegate so the special election for the House seat could be held at the same time as the state Senate seat he’s running for. Otherwise, if he won the Senate race, the House seat would have been unfilled as the legislative session began.
The candidates: The Democratic candidate is JJ Singh, who heads a hotel company and is a former adviser to Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. The Washington Post said that Singh, a University of Virginia graduate, was “the first turbaned Sikh to serve in the Peace Corps.” The Republican candidate is Ram Venkatachalam, an IT consultant who chairs a transportation advisory panel in Loudoun County.
Neither candidate responded to our questionnaire.